City to Adopt Changes In Handling of Abuse Cases

By SEWELL CHAN

Published: March 30, 2006

Responding to the killing of Nixzmary Brown, a 7-year-old girl beaten to death in January, a city panel yesterday recommended changes to improve coordination between the child welfare agency and the Police and Education Departments, including giving teachers and guidance counselors more leeway to report signs of neglect.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who created the panel after Nixzmary's death, immediately promised to adopt the changes.

Under the changes, the police for the first time will assign a full-time supervisor, a lieutenant, to child welfare headquarters to be a liaison between the two agencies. Caseworkers will be required to seek entry orders when denied access to the home of a child suspected to be at risk of neglect or abuse. And school officials will have more license to alert the authorities when a student has too many unexplained absences.

The changes are intended to correct lapses identified in the case of Nixzmary, whose body was found on Jan. 11. Fifteen days later, the mayor announced the creation of the panel, the Interagency Task Force on Child Welfare and Safety, to identify ''where the systemic breakdowns occurred'' in the case.

The announcement yesterday was the latest in a series of promised reforms in the wake of Nixzmary's death. In January, the mayor announced a greatly reinforced monitoring system for children in troubled homes and the creation of a new mayoral office to ensure that city agencies work together to prevent abuse. And just last week, the child welfare agency said it would track abuse cases using a data collection method similar to one that the police use to track crime patterns.

In Nixzmary's case, her school told the authorities last May that she had missed 46 days and told the authorities in December that she had missed an additional 16 days. Caseworkers were rebuffed when trying to interview her family but did not obtain a warrant. Two detectives accompanied caseworkers to the girl's school in December, but the extent of their involvement in her case has been unclear. The girl's mother and stepfather have been charged with second-degree murder.

In a 27-page report, the panel avoided assigning blame and instead focused on changes in protocols. It found that while the Education Department had an ''excellent attendance tracking system,'' there was no deadline for investigating excessive absences, and inadequate procedures for giving information about absences to officials at the Administration for Children's Services.

The changes will require each school to investigate excessive unexplained absences -- 10 consecutive missed days or 20 in a four-month period -- within 10 days after the absences are reported. If the school fails to meet that deadline, the regional attendance supervisor for the school will have five days to help the school complete the investigation.

The panel also found that school officials were confused about what constitutes educational neglect. New rules will make clear that educators do not need to prove ''actual educational harm'' when calling the state's child abuse hot line about excessive absences. Such harm can be ''reasonably presumed,'' the panel said.

The panel found that caseworkers calling schools to check on reports of absenteeism often failed to reach the right person. It also recommended improvements for the so-called Instant Response Teams, which comprise police officers and child welfare workers who jointly investigate the most severe abuse or neglect cases.

The Police Department will set up a 24-hour hot line that child welfare officials can use to request a team; currently, those officials must decide whether to contact the special victims unit, the child abuse squad, precinct detectives or a night-watch squad. Now, the calls will be routed through the detective bureau.

Mr. Bloomberg, who announced the panel's findings at City Hall, said it was impossible to know whether the changes could have prevented Nixzmary's death.

''What really happened with Nixzmary Brown is, her parents killed her,'' he said. ''We as a society didn't recognize the danger the child was in and respond fast enough, obviously.''

The three men responsible for the changes promised to follow the recommendations. ''We are committed to every sentence, every paragraph, in the plan,'' said John B. Mattingly, commissioner of children's services. The schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, said he was ''glad that lines of communication between our schools and A.C.S. will be clarified.''

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said that new training for recruits, officers and supervisors would sensitize them to abuse and neglect. ''Nothing resonates to a police officer more personally or powerfully than a call to help a child in danger,'' he said.